R B Cunninghame Graham

Sir Jacob Epstein 1880 - 1959

Summary

Head of an elderly man with wavy hair brushed back off the face, with a small, pointed beard and curled moustache. R.B. Cunninghame Graham was a Scottish explorer, writer and former Liberal MP for Lanark. In his autobiography, Epstein wrote " Imagine Don Quixote walking about your studio and sitting for his portrait! This was R. B. Cunninghame Graham, and you could see him on horseback any day in Hyde Park, on his small American mustang, seated in a high saddle, riding along Rotten Row in a bowler hat. He was no poseur, as many imagine. His distinguished appearance and bearing were natural. No man with easier manners, more debonair and courteous. At my studio, he was always the centre of a group, and his anecdotes and conversation were delivered in the same incisive and stylistic manner that he wrote in. His candour was refreshing, he had been in Parliament years before, but the probability of his character could not stand an assembly where conformity and chicanery were the order of the day. I should have gone on with his head and made it into a bust and full figure and mounted it on a horse, and had it set up in Hyde Park, where his ghost now rides."